The Age of Wrath
by Pachamama9
Summary: Fleur is called to Beauxbatons and finds her sister sitting outside of Madame Maxime's office, her hands covered in blood. One-shot.


_A/N: Written for the International Wizarding School Championship and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

 _Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

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Gabrielle Delacour was anything but perfect. In fact, she had always been a troublemaker, unable to follow the rules even if her life depended on it. She wasn't a "bad kid," as her family and friends would say, but she was so fiercely loyal to those she loved and what she believed in that the rules were just a light suggestion.

French students, unlike English ones, started their magical education at nine years old instead of eleven, with their first three years at Beauxbatons being a combination of basic Muggle and magical schooling. Each year, it seemed, Gabrielle Delacour was every professor's nightmare. By the time she was a Cinq, or a fifth year, she had already made an enemy of most of her teachers. Although she was a highly intelligent girl, just like her sister, her homework was filled to the brim with profanity and angry words.

However, Gabrielle was quite unlike her sister, personality-wise. Fleur Delacour was a sweet girl, charming yet distant to most everyone she met, while Gabrielle was an ferocious fireball of emotions.

Gabrielle hated her teachers. She hated her classmates. Her friends even found her to be blunt and harsh. But most of all, she hated one professor in particular: Madame Bisset.

To be fair, Madame Bisset was loathed by half the student body because of how abundantly _boring_ she was, but to Gabrielle, Bisset was the Grindelwald of Beauxbatons. She received detentions at least once a week from the woman for her screaming matches during class. Gabrielle never failed to point out every single flaw in the teacher's presentations, any mistake in her exams, and any contradiction in her lectures. She was a thorn in Bisset's side, and no one knew why.

Sure, Bisset was a little condescending, and her lectures usually put the class to sleep, but they didn't care enough to point out every single mistake she made. Most of Gabrielle's friends and classmates snored through her class or daydreamed about lunch instead.

But it wasn't until Fleur found her little sister in the headmistress' office, her head in her hands and her hair a rat's nest, that she understood the extent of Gabrielle Delacour's hate for the woman. Her sister was sitting in the bench, hunched forward with her elbows on her thighs. Her right leg bounced up and down furiously, like it always did when she was nervous.

"Gabrielle?" Fleur called out, and her little sister's head shot up in surprise. "The school owled me, I—oh!"

Gabrielle nearly bowled her over running to her, wrapping her shaking arms around her sister's waist and burying her head in her shoulder. "—said I could be expelled, but I was only trying to help, Bisset was gonna—" Her words tumbled out of her mouth as though the tight thread around her voice had been loosened, unraveling inch upon inch of fear and frustration. "—prison, but I didn't know, Fleur, I'm so _sorry—_ " She was speaking so fast Fleur could barely understand her, babbling like a baby who had just learned to speak. "—to Faucher, but I swear, I _swear_ I didn't mean to—"

"Gabrielle, slow down!" Faucher Institution was the massive French hospital in Paris, and the mention of it made Fleur's insides clench. Faucher? Was someone injured? She tried go comfort her sister, smoothing her hair down, but then she saw the red staining her sister's fingers, and her brain malfunctioned, whirring horribly with panic. "Gabi—are you hurt?" She pulled her sister's head away from her body and frantically checked her for any sign of injury."Where—the blood, you—"

Gabrielle shook her head furiously. There was blood all over her bare arms, as though she had dipped her arms in a bucket of scarlet paint up to her elbows and then tried to scrub it away after it dried. "It's n-not mine, Fleur, it's _hers_ , I didn't mean to, I—"

Fleur had never seen her sister so frenetic before, so violently distressed, and frankly, it was frightening her. "Did you hurt someone? What happened? Did you—"

"Mademoiselle Delacour!" A short, middle-aged man with thick-rimmed glasses entered the corridor, his stare so stern that Fleur rose, straightening her back. "The headmistress will see you now."

Gabrielle visibly shrunk at the declaration, her fingers twisted together like strands of twine. "Yes, Monsieur."

 _Monsieur_. The title was a simple one, an honorific used by every student in the school...except for Gabrielle Delacour. She hadn't spoken those words since she was a Trois. Fleur's sister referred to her teacher by last name or first name only, as she refused to bow down to anyone. Upon Gabrielle say the word, Fleur knew something was dreadfully, terribly wrong. Gabrielle shuffled after the man, picking at the skin of her cuticles, and Fleur followed.

Madame Maxime's office was just as Fleur remembered: massive, with wooden paneling covering every inch of the space. Wrapped in azure and teal, the room was more reminiscent of ocean waves than a solid office. At the northmost wall was a large chair, embellished with glistening beryl stones, and the walnut desk stained a rich, blonde colour. "Take a seat," said Madame Maxime. She was draped in sky blue robes, her sleeves dragging across her well-organized desk. Her accent was mellifluous, like a well-tuned Steinway, but her voice was thickened with something else. Something darker, more dangerous. It was a tone that Fleur was well-acquainted with, having been a veteran of the Second Wizarding War, but she had never heard it explicitly tainting Madame Maxime's words.

Although Fleur's brain was flaring with caution, she pulled her hair into a ponytail and led her sister to the first of three chairs seated before the headmistress' desk. As they sat, the chairs and desk shifted, rising and falling so that they were seated at eye level with the stern headmistress. "Madame Maxime," Fleur stated, her expression betraying the obvious confusion she felt. "What happened? Why did you contact me?" She felt like a Beauxbatons student again. The last time she'd been in this room, seated in one of these chairs, she'd been fifteen years old, barely a teenager, with self-esteem that barely rose past the the hem of her skirt and bruises from Adrien Couture's fingers. Before

Sweat trickled down her spine, and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair, pulling at her collar. _Stop it_ , she told herself. _You're not a child_. But Madame Maxime's stature, the way her arms were folded across her broad chest… Nostalgia drowned inside of her chest, flailing weakly. "This could be," Madame Maxime began, "difficult." Fleur pressed her teeth together, reaching her hand across the valley between their chairs to touch her sister's forearm.

Gabrielle _flinched_ , and Fleur reeled, seeing the scene crystallize in her mind once more. Her little sister jerked away at the sudden contact, startling, and suddenly Fleur's heart was on fire. "Tell me what happened," she ordered, pulling her hand back into her lap. "Why is there blood on my sister's hands? What have you done to her?"

Madame Maxime and the other professor exchanged a guarded look before speaking again. "Gabrielle attacked a teacher," she explained. "Madame Bisset, her Charms teacher, is in critical condition at Faucher as we speak. The Guérisseurs told us that chances are high she may never wake up."

 _Gabrielle attacked a teacher_. _She may never wake up_.

Madame Maxime was still speaking, something about brain damage and comatose states, but Fleur was staring at her sister instead. "Gabrielle?" she whispered. "Is this true?"

Gabrielle had been chewing on her lip for the entire time, and now it split as she bit down, _hard,_ red welling over pink. "I…"

"Gabrielle used a curse that she learned in class: the Blasting Curse. I'm sure you're familiar with it."

Fleur nodded. Gabrielle, her little sister, the light of her life, the one person on this earth that she loved more than anything… She had tried to kill someone? "I don't understand… What happened?" Surely there was some other explanation for what had happened. Gabrielle wouldn't have tried to kill anyone. And with the way she was acting now, she looked more like a victim than an attacker.

"Gabrielle wouldn't tell us exactly what happened, but according to eyewitnesses—"

"No," Fleur snapped. "I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to my sister." She turned to look at Gabrielle, and suddenly the other Delacour sister was staring back at her, surprised. "What happened, _mon trognon_?" This time, when she touched Gabrielle's hand, covering splatters of red.

Gabrielle gave a quick yet unmistakable glance at Madame Maxime, her eyes ringed with trepidation and tearstained mascara. Her fingers curled around her sister's, grateful for the gentle, physical assurance.

"It's okay," Fleur reminded her. What was so difficult to say that Gabrielle could barely speak? "You can tell me, Gabrielle. You know I believe you, no matter what. I trust you."

Gabrielle crumpled beneath the weight of Fleur's words, her shoulders dropping. There was a sense of relief to her action, too, as though having her sister there had released her from the obligation of secrecy. "I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry—" She hiccupped, hiding her sobs behind one hand. "She was _hurting_ him!"

Through uncontrollable sobs and comforting words, they finally pulled the full story out of Gabrielle Delacour.

Marcellin Fournier was Gabrielle's best friend, a boy from a farm west of Caen. They'd been inseparable from the start, attached at the hip by a love for potions and an obsession with the Bulgarian Quidditch team.

Gabrielle had known Madame Bisset for almost as long, having started with the woman as her primary Charms teacher when she was a Deux, a second year at Beauxbatons. Deep into her second year, Gabrielle had been out after curfew, sneaking out of her dormitory on a dare. When she had gone past Madame Bisset's room, however, she'd seen something she shouldn't have. Something no one, let alone a nine-year-old child, should have to see. After what she'd witnessed, she knew Bisset was a woman capable of dark, horrible things, even if she hadn't understood quite what it was at the time.

From that point forward, she couldn't pin down her anger around Madame Bisset. Her fury came a place of dark resentment, and it spilled from her whenever she saw them because Gabrielle didn't know how else to respond to such a situation. And now, three years later, Gabrielle found Madame Bisset cornering her best friend against the wall, her hand curling against the Marcellin's neck.

The first thing that dawned on her was how violently the boy was shaking, and then Gabrielle's vision blurred as she fumbled for her wand. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't _think_ —

All she knew was _she's hurting him, she's hurting him, she's hurting him,_ and before she knew it she was screaming, "Get the _fuck_ away from him!"

Bisset jumped away from Marcellin, whipping her wand from her robes, but Gabrielle had already fired one spell that sent her sprawling across the floor. Marcellin scrambled away, humiliated and scared, and when Gabrielle moved to check on him, Bisset shot a dark green spell at her head; she dove out of the way, but it skimmed her arm still, leaving a wicked burn.

"Stay out of this, Delacour!" howled Madame Bisset, as Gabrielle's next spell split open her leg. "Put your wand down! You don't understand, you're only a _child_ —" But even her actions were hypocritical: as she cautioned Gabrielle against using offensive spells, her own stunning spell hammered into the girl's chest, knocking her unconscious.

Gabrielle hung her head low, turning away from her sister. "She took me somewhere deep in the school… She was going to kill me, she told me she couldn't go to jail and she was sorry, and she…" Gabrielle's hands shook so badly that she had to stop speaking for a moment. "I didn't have my wand, but I just didn't want to d-d- _die_ —" She sobbed into her hands as Fleur rubbed her back soothingly. "And I didn't think, I-I didn't know the spell, it's just she was coming at me and saying all these things and my magic… It went _everywhere_ , and when I opened my eyes, she was bleeding so _much_ , a-and I took her wand, but I was so _scared_ , I just—"

Something inside of Fleur twisted darkly. "And then you…"

Gabrielle nodded, her shoulders trembling with the effort of spilling her secrets. "I didn't know what the spell d-did, I just knew it was b-bad, and I wanted to stop her so b _-badly_ …"

"Even though Madame Bisset was already incapacitated?" added Maxime.

Gabrielle cried harder. "Y-y- _yes_! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"

Suddenly, Madame Maxime's eyes were trained on Fleur. Although her words sounded cold, the corner of her face was twitching uncontrollably as though trying to swallow down any emotions she might have concerning Gabrielle. "The consequence for her actions, I'm afraid, is expulsion." Beside her, Gabrielle let out a strangled sound, clapping her hand over her mouth. "And her trial will officially take place two weeks from today concerning any legal consequences—"

"Stop," Fleur snarled, standing now. She never been so angry in her entire life; the fury tingled in her extremities and shot down her neck. "Stop _talking_. You're telling me that not only did you fail to recognize the presence of a child molestor at your precious school, but you're expelling _my kid_ for protecting herself against her and for saving her friend? Are you _fucking_ kidding me?"

Strangely, Madame Maxime flinched at the accusation. "Mademoiselle—"

"It was self-defense, not a cold-blooded attack! You can't punish her for something any other student would have done in her situation!"

Maxime swallowed. "You heard your sister, Mademoiselle. She attacked Bisset after the woman was already unconscious."

Fleur's face was blotchy now, spotted with rage. "She was _frightened_! That pervert would have killed her to keep her quiet!"

"A crime from one," said Madame Maxime slowly, "does not warrant a crime from another. We're already dealing with Bisset's crimes, and believe me, no one was more horrified than me." She pursed her lips. "But the severity of Bisset's actions does not permit the violent reaction of your sister, Mademoiselle. To use the Blasting Curse against any living creature, especially a human, is a grievous crime. As a minor, Gabrielle's sentence will be lowere—"

"She was _attacked_!" Fleur shouted, pointing furiously at her former headmistress. "How can you do this to her? You _know_ her! You know that she would never hurt anyone unless she had to!" Fleur swore she saw Maxime's calm expression falter under the weight of her words. Hope churned inside of her. "You can't do this, Madame Maxime. You _know_ that this is wrong. Please."

But Madame Maxime was a law-abiding witch, and not even Fleur's pleas could change her mind. "I'm sorry, Mademoiselle. There is nothing I can do." Her hand shook as she reached out to the terrified student in front of her. "Gabrielle, your wand, if you please."

Gabrielle removed her wand from her robes and placed it on the table before her; before Madame Maxime could pick it up and remove it, however, Fleur Delacour snatched it from the wooden desk. The anger in her head was still there, muted to a dull, persistent roar."Teachers," she declared, her voice heavy, "are supposed to protect their students." She lifted her chin. She and Gabrielle… They were Delacours, and Delacours _never_ let anything beat them into submission. Not even Beauxbatons. "As far as I'm concerned, Madame Bisset… Madame Maxime… They are one and the same. Endangering children, punishing them for doing what is right." With one swift movement, she snapped her sister's wand in half, orange sparks spitting from its center. She dropped both halves on the desk with a clatter and then grabbed her sister's hand. "Come on, Gabrielle."

Madame Maxime stared blankly at the broken pieces of the wand before her. For once, the most talkative woman in all of Beauxbatons was speechless. Fleur had broken the wand herself instead of allowing the school to do so. It was an incredibly powerful statement: _we will not be broken by this._ As the Delacour sisters left the room, her tense shoulders dropped, defeated.

Now outside of the headmistress' office, Fleur interlaced her fingers with her sister's stained ones. "Do not worry," she assured Gabrielle. "We're going somewhere new. Somewhere safe."

Gabrielle gaped at her sister. "B-but the trial, they said—" She gulped. "They said I was going to prison, Fleur."

"Over my dead body, _mon trognon_." Fleur kissed her forehead. "Those laws only apply in France, Gabrielle, so get your things. We're taking a trip. A long one. And we're getting you a new wand as well."

"But Fleur, I..." She glanced back at the door to the headmistress' office. "It wasn't just because I was scared, you know? I-I was so angry, so... I saw what she'd done to Marcellin, how it broke him, year after year, and I..." She choked back a sob. "I was just so angry, I couldn't help it, I—"

Fleur shushed her. "It's alright," she promised. "I know. I understand."

For the first time that afternoon, Gabrielle smiled. Breathless, she replied, "Th-thank you."

Fleur wrapped an arm around Gabrielle's trembling shoulders. "There is nothing to thank me for, Gabrielle. You're my sister. This… This is what sisters are for."

As they stepped through the gates of Beauxbatons, newfound hope coating the trauma of that morning, they both sighed in relief that the whole ordeal was over, at least for now.

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 _A/N: Thanks for reading! Please follow, favorite, and review!_

 _Challenges used:_

 _International Wizarding School Championship - Beauxbatons, "they all sighed with relief when the whole ordeal was over."_

 _Hogwarts School - Demonology, Task 8_


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